Leaving Wagstaff to deal with the mutinous Sowars, I collected about a dozen of my own Persian police, and with these and two British N.C.O's., Sergeants Calthorpe, R.F.A., and Saunders of the 13th Hussars, set off on my mission. We marched the greater part of the night, and early next day reached Turkmanchai on the Tabriz {177} road, twenty-five miles north-west of Mianeh. Here I impressed ten Sowars of ours who, feigning illness and suffering from "fire-shyness," had stolen out of the trenches at Tikmadash. Our route from Turkmanchai lay nearly due north towards the foothills of the lofty Bazgush Range and the country of the Khalkhal sub-tribe of Shahsavans. We bivouacked for the night in the prosperous village called Benik Suma, which stands in the middle of an arboreal-cloistered dale watered by a shallow but swift-running mountain stream. Supplies were plentiful, and the hand of famine had not touched this secluded Persian hamlet, which nestled so cosily beneath the glorious foliage of oak and chestnut. When the march was resumed in the morning, it was found that four of the "malingerers" from Turkmanchai had deserted overnight. My little command did not seem at all easy in its mind at the prospect of having a brush with the enemy, and every hour that brought us nearer to the hill country an increasing number of Sowars reported sick and begged to be allowed to fall out. At first I was puzzled by the spread of this sudden malady, for the symptoms were identical in each case--severe abdominal pains; but presently the mystery was explained. I encountered on the road a Persian Cossack who had ridden in from the Sarab district, and had come across the mountains that lay ahead of us. He volunteered the information that in a village about twenty miles distant he had {178} seen a Turkish cavalry patrol. Our Sowars on hearing this looked very glum, and four of them at once complained of violent illness. They rolled on the ground in pretended agony, artfully simulating an acute cholera seizure. This time, and without much difficulty, I diagnosed the disease as being that of pure funk, or what is commonly known in military parlance as "cold feet." While sympathizing with the sufferers, I gravely told them that I had instructions to shoot off-hand any of my command who became cholera-stricken, and to burn their bodies in order to prevent the disease spreading. The result was little short of magical. The "severe pains" disappeared, and the patients made such a wonderful recovery that within half an hour they were able to mount their horses and turn their faces towards Sarab once more. And the "epidemic" did not reappear.